You also need to make sure your home broadband equipment can keep up. The NBN recommends upgrading your modem about as often as you would your mobile phone, especially if it’s over five years old. Older routers with older technologies like Wi-Fi 4 will only be able to deliver speeds of around 100 megabits per second. If you want the best speeds, up to 1000 megabits per second, consider upgrading to a router with Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7.
If you have a larger home or areas with weak signals, you should also consider using Wi-Fi extenders or mesh systems to help boost coverage. These tools—like the Eero, TP-Link Deco, or Netgear Orbi—are now commonplace and can help eliminate dead zones and provide a strong connection in every room.
How is it free?
Before the election, the Albanese government pledged $3 billion in upgrades to “complete the NBN.” The speed improvements are possible thanks to billions of dollars in federal funding to upgrade the network from the previous Liberal government’s mixed-technology model. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott once said that the 25 megabit NBN speed would be “more than enough” for the average household: today, download speeds would be 1000 megabits.
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“Our existing investments in HFC and FTTP upgrades have laid a solid foundation for the NBN to begin releasing faster speeds and more capacity without the NBN having to make or need significant additional capital investment,” an NBN CO spokesperson previously said.
What are the advantages?
Users can expect much faster downloads, more reliable Zoom calls, and streaming with less buffering.
For Australia as a whole, the nation can expect to quickly climb the global speed rankings and reap the economic benefits that come with it.
Australia recently ranked a lowly 75th on SpeedTest’s global speed rankings, one spot above Uzbekistan and just below Oman, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Jamaica, with customers reporting an average of 88 megabits per second. Expect that number to move as customers upgrade plans or automatically get speed boosts.
Economic modelling from consulting giant Accenture, commissioned by NBN Co, found that for every 1 megabit per second in average broadband speed, Australia’s productivity-based GDP grew by an average of 0.04 per cent between 2012 and 2022, a value of around $122 billion to the economy.
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